Snowmageddon 2012 has hit Seattle, and I can’t help but
think about the massive snow storm that attacked Seattle my first winter
here. Today as the snow continues to
fall and coat everything, I am sitting on my couch, drinking coffee, and
thinking about getting a head start on my packing for my big move in a couple
weeks. 3 years ago when the snowstorm
hit, things were very different. So, in
honor of Snowmageddon, I am skipping ahead a few months in the story to tell
the story of Snowmageddon 2008. Don’t
worry, I’ll go back and fill in the blanks later.
When snow
started falling the week before Christmas break 3 years ago, it may be a bit of
an exaggeration to say this (but very close to the truth), I was happier than I
could remember ever being. Sierra and I
had gotten an apartment together with Lucy and her cat Bob in the neighborhood
of Magnolia in Seattle.
Magnolia is an interesting
place. The neighborhood is a peninsula
composed of 2 large hills stacked behind each other. There are only 3 entrances into the
neighborhood: 1) the Magnolia Bridge, which takes you directly to the top of
the 1st hill, 2) Fisherman’s Terminal, which takes you through a
marina full of docked fishing boats to the bottom of the first hill, and 3) Dravus
St., which is a small bridge at the bottom of the first hill that goes over the
train tracks that divide Magnolia from the rest of the world.
If you enter Magnolia from Dravus
or Fishermans Terminal, and look up the hill, there are cities of apartment
complexes towards the top. This is where
Sierra and I had our apartment. We were
about 2 blocks down from the top of the hill, 4 blocks up from the bottom.
If you were to continue traveling
up this hill, you’d see more houses, less apartments—giving the neighborhood
the feel of a suburb that accidently found itself marooned in the center of a
large city. Continue up and over the
hill, and the houses get a bit bigger.
At the bottom of the first hill, in the valley between the two hills,
you find Magnolia Village. This 4 block
radius “Village” is composed of one bar, a couple restaurants, and a few shops.
Travel through the village and
start your ascent up the 2nd hill, and you’ll notice that the houses
are getting bigger and bigger. Once you
reach the crest of that hill, you are looking at mansions. Magnolia is where rich people go to
retire. The back hill ends in a cliff
that drops off into the Puget Sound.
This hill is filled with huge mansions overlooking the water. On a clear day, you can see the entire
skyline of the Olympic Mountains above the water from the oversized decks and
windows of these homes.
Magnolia was a unique place for me
to begin my Seattle experience. It is
removed from the rest of the city, far from highways, disconnected from the
main stream of Seattle life. Living on
the face of the first hill was like being in a college dorm. There was one bar at the bottom of the hill
that many of the apartment dwellers frequented.
The more Sierra and I and our friend Cristin frequented this bar, the
more we got to know the apartment residents of Magnolia, and the more we
realized that we all lived, if not in the same apartment complex, then at least
a block or 2 away.
By the time Snowmageddon 2008 hit
that December, I had gotten to know my Magnolia crew fairly well, had found
myself a boyfriend, and had sprained my ankle.
My first 4 months in Seattle were eventful to say the least. As I said, Magnolia is already cut off from
the rest of the world, but then imagine Seattle getting hit with half a foot of
snow. We were truly cut off. There was no getting in or out of
Magnolia. Remember how I mentioned we
lived 2 blocks from the top of the hill and 4 from the bottom? This isn’t just a normal hill…I swear the
roads go up at 45 degree angles. The sidewalks
are grooved so that you don’t slip backwards as you hike up them. When the snow finally dumped there was no
driving up this hill, for fear of slipping backwards (I saw few cars attempt
this unsuccessfully) and no driving down the hill for fear of not being able to
stop (saw this too).
We were stranded. Time had stopped, no one was working or even
thinking about working. So what else was
there to do but hike down the hill to the bar and enjoy our temporarily suspended
lives? But remember—I had a sprained
ankle, which made “hiking” not so easy.
I decided to take off the boot I’d been wearing for 6 weeks and put on a
small ace bandage instead.
I have snippets of memories during
the days of this snowstorm. Walking down
the hill, beers in hand, stumbling upon sledders who told us we could sled to
the bottom on their sleds as long as we could do it without spilling our
beers. Walking up the hill, completely
out of breath by the time we got to the top, feeling my ankle swell with every
step. I have an image coming down the
hill again of Sierra, Cristin and I—we hit an icy patch and suddenly both
Cristin and Sierra are simultaneously flat on their backs on the ground—I can’t
still hear the “boom, boom” of them both hitting the ground in my mind. I remember seeing cars strewn along the hill,
left abandoned after attempts at escaping.
Then there’s me crying in the middle of the grocery store because I
found out I wouldn’t be making it home to New York in time for Christmas. There’s 20 of us at one person’s apartment,
cooking a huge spaghetti dinner, staring out the windows to announce that it’s “STILL
SNOWING!” which made me temporarily forget that I wouldn’t be seeing my family
as soon as I’d thought. I remember
laughing and smiling so much that my face hurt.
It’s funny how snow days as “adults”
(if that’s what we could have been called at the time) can be just as much, if
not more, fun than snow days as kids. I’d
lived in a city where 3 feet of snow didn’t shut down school, so my first
Seattle snowstorm was a wonderful surprise.
I felt like a kid again, playing with my friends in the snow.
I remember looking back at the last
4 months of my life at the time and thinking about how different my life had
suddenly become—how much more full of smiles and laughter it was, how much
happier I’d become in just that short amount of time. Looking out my window at Snowmageddon today
makes me think about how much has changed since that snowstorm 3 short years
ago. Today, I am not running off to the
bar with friends, but sitting comfortably on my couch, snuggling with my
dog. And that’s ok. I’ll remember that snow storm as one of the
most fun experiences of my life, but life is different now. I’m not in Magnolia anymore, and neither are
a lot of those people. We’re all still
friends, but I’d like to think we’ve grown up a bit. We’re not living that “dorm” life anymore. And I’m ok with that. This past Monday I turned 28, and I think it’s
time that I start thinking about being an adult. At least some of the time…
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